The Lemming Rebellion
by Threesmallcrows
Summary: AU fic. Stick the Varia in the middle of golden-America suburbia and there's bound to be a real mess. Seven kids take this world into their unforgiving hands. Let the fists fly. DISCONTINUED.
1. One

**The Lemming Rebellion**

**Chapter One**

"Fucking adopted."

It is eight o'clock on a sweltering August evening. Two teenagers are struggling with an aftershock. One of them, the one with the long hair, is Squalo. The other one, the angry one, is named Xanxus. The latter is being shaken; the former is trying desperately to right the ship.

"They wait until fucking now to tell me."

Squalo can't think of a thing to say. Xanxus' anger radiates off his body like heat. Squalo wants to tell him to shut up and calm down, if only to lower the already horrible temperature just a bit.

"Did they think. I wasn't. Fucking ready? What the fuck?" He paces the street in tighter and tighter circles. "No, no, they were afraid. Of what I would think of them."

_Who wouldn't be afraid of you? _Thinks Squalo. A tiger hiding in a man—boy's—skin. A feral thing. Unclean. Unbelonging, but also uncaged—not safely locked up like the animals in the zoo. Dangerous. A threat.

Squalo realizes with a jolt that it is only a matter of time until creatures like them are put down. One way. Or another.

The threat continues to spew venom into the clean, air-freshener scented air of the kitchen.

"The cowards, living in their little clean house with _nothing _to hide…All their words. They stink of _bullshit _now. Those fucking pieces of worthless trash."

Xanxus smashes the bottle against the kitchen table, an exclamation point to end his sentence. It shatters loudly, shards like memories raining down to Squalo's worthless, faithless kitchen floor. Squalo winces slightly at the sound of lost control. He imagines the noise prowling like a tiger out his door, lithely striding down the silent asphalt roads. He sees it scratching at the closed blinds and green lawns and clean doors of suburbia. Coated in the sticky orange glow of the dying sun, the dust particles dancing like jellyfish in the air, Squalo feels like he's living on an alien planet. He picks unconsciously at the collar of his shirt, the walls of his parents' house closing in slowly.

Put down, one way or another. There can be only one winner. Squalo nudges a shard of glass with his toe. It looks forlornly up at him, lost and alone.

"Fourteen fucking years, they wait. And they tell me to calm down? What are they going to do, take away my _things? _Kick me out? I wish they'd hurry up and do it. Then I could leave—but what am I waiting for? I don't have to wait. They have no right to tell me what to do. They have no _right_."

Squalo can see murder in his eyes. Yes, he thinks. What _are _we waiting for?

He throws the punch like a lifeguard throwing a buoy at a drowning child. It lands squarely on the unprepared Xanxus' face and sends him flying out of the house. Squalo watches the neat edges of the door frame Xanxus' body. Portrait of the Exit of a Fed-Up Teenager. Or The Salvation of a Friend.

Squalo follows slowly, walking with the air of a saint. The fists he makes are holy with the air of martyrdom. He _knows _Xanxus can beat him in a fight, especially with this type of mood on him. But he's willing to take the bruises in exchange for giving a lesson, perhaps the only one he has ever really learned. Meanwhile, Xanxus is picking himself up in the street, one hand to his bleeding nose. The blood is violent red, made neon by the setting sun.

"What the _fuck?_"

Xanxus' eyes meet his, and it is the clashing of the thunderbolts of the pagan Gods before the lightning strikes the church tower.

"Fight me."

"_Why?_" He still doesn't get it.

"_Fuck! _You _idiot! _Does it fucking matter?" Squalo gestures wildly at the street, the air, the neat buildings and square lawns. "Who the fuck is going to care? Who's going to watch? If you want to fight, just do it!"

Just do it. If you want to fight—

Xanxus licks the blood on his chin, and it tastes like freedom. The flailing arms of his so-called parents die with the light. Neither boy notices when the sun slips beneath the waves of clouds, while the rumble of the thunder announces the last and greatest of the summer storms. The first drops are enough to wash away the thin fingers of Love and Submission. The punches land, and the black water beats down on the interlocked bodies of both boys, struggling together against a force bigger than themselves as the storm bears down hard. Squalo smiles as his teeth are bloodied, as the bruises plaster themselves to his skin. _Just this once_, he thinks. _I'll only let him do this once. Next time, if he thinks it's going to be this easy—ha! I'll give him another idea—_

A few minutes later, it is over.

The clouds move on. Xanxus is breathing hard, bent over Squalo's body, his best friend's blood coating his hands like a second skin. Xanxus uncurls himself. The night comes on and the stars peek out timidly from beneath the trailing clouds' veils. _Is it over? _They ask.

_No_, answers Xanxus. _This is just the beginning. _

From the ground, Squalo coughs hollowly.

"Get it now?"

Xanxus looks back, and there's the smile of a revolutionary on his face.

"Yeah."

Though most of the members are still missing, and despite the fact that it will be years until they call themselves that, this is the real start of the Lemming Rebellion.


	2. Two

If you wanted to be flippant about it, you could say it wasn't _really_ Xanxus who started the Lemming Rebellion. Because if Squalo hadn't thrown that punch, then where would they all be? Still stranded in the grey wasteland of ordinary, probably. Really, it was Squalo that started it all. But then you could argue that if it wasn't for the gun, _that _gun, then Squalo would never have found himself and the story would have ended there. If you want to go even further back, you could say it was Squalo's parents.

I think it started with all of those things, in little bits.

Squalo had, in those childhood days, something of a fundamental problem with his life. That is, it wasn't really his life at all. This was all because he had noticed very early on that something rather _important _was missing from his house. One of the warnings of this absence was that he called it a house and not a home. Essentially, it came down to the fact that his parents treated him about the way one treats a broken piece of furniture— like it isn't there, because no one wants to bother taking the time to throw it out.

This is a scary thing for a six year old to realize, and Squalo realized it precisely and with great clarity. The rug, you might say, was yanked out from his feet, and there was no floor to land on—just a hole that went on for miles and miles. Child Squalo's mind went, in the way typical of him, straight past the nature of the problem and on to the solution. In what way could he get his parents to _notice _him?

It was a very tough dilemma.

And so for the first twelve or so years of his life, Squalo didn't muddle along the way Xanxus did. He acted on one very clear, very defined purpose, and that purpose was to get his parents to acknowledge him, in one way or another. Like a scientist, he tested out different theories. At first he took what Xanxus complained about—_they won't let me fight, they want me to get good grades, they want me to come home early—_and applied it to his own life. He came home early. He studied for tests. For God's sake, he smiled at the teachers he hated. He didn't fight, which was the worst part of all of it. When that didn't work, he switched methodically and mechanically to acting as _bad _as possible. He picked fights constantly, even when he felt tired and out-of-sorts. He spat at teachers, cursed at everyone and made an enemy out of every single student in the school except for Xanxus, who was perhaps even more universally feared than himself. In short, Squalo came home with everything from glorious report cards to broken teeth, from a handful of notices from the principal's office to a book of lunchtime passes he had stolen from another student.

He tried it _all. _

Who would give such a guy credit for this type of self control? Next time he acts like an asshole, remember that he's probably still working the first dozen years out of his system.

Eventually, though, none of the various courses of action worked out. Squalo was thirteen years old, incredibly disappointed, exhausted beyond hope, and on the cusp of a revelation—for the discovery of oneself can be called nothing less. It took, however, a gun to trigger it.

_Someday, _Xanxus had said, _I'm just going to kill someone. _

That's it.

Squalo goes straight home after school that day, his feet moving with a fevered determination. He liberates the keys to the drawer from his parents' "secret" hiding spot. He moves a chair in front of the cupboard and unlocks the top drawer. It opens with a moribund creak, long disused. He feels around inside, his fingers brushing spiders and cobwebs. They connect, suddenly, with the cool metal of a gun.

It is his father's gun, supposedly for self-defense. Squalo finds the idea laughable. What is there to defend against, in this town?

He moves steadily to the kitchen table, gun in hand. His footsteps sound very loud in the emptiness of late afternoon. Of course, the parents are gone somewhere again—are they _ever _home? Orange, sticky sunlight pours in on his skin, like jelly or thick plaster. Even his own breath sounds very loud to his ears—God, it's silent. He shivers and grips the gun harder.

It's the kitchen door that stops him. The ordinariness of the door, the familiar scratches on it, the worn color and polished glass—it's too much. He sits down, defeated yet again. This will require some thinking. His elbow hits the table like, _high-five man, how's it going? _

_Not good_, thinks Squalo. _I think I'm going to have to kill someone, but there's no one to kill. _

His elbow looks forlornly up at him.

_Well, yes there is. _

That was to the point.

The gun is sweating in his palm. Drops trickle slowly down his arm. They pool in little crystalline ovals on the wood, filling the scratches with miniscule lakes of human discomfort. Squalo shifts a little. He's sure the metal is melting.

_Yes, there's _that_, but… _

The table is hard against his skin. Every groove is imprinted on him.

_But what? No better way to send them a message. _

Squalo sighs. He can almost see the air in front of him moving.

_There's got to be another way. _

_Do you really think so? Haven't you tried everything already? If you ask me, this is definitely the best way—the only way, really. _

_I have tried everything. But there's still more—isn't there?_

… _What do _you _think? _

Squalo shakes his head.

_Are you scared?_

_Maybe._

_You are. _

_Yes. _

_Isn't this what you wanted?_

_Not in this way, I didn't think so. _

_It'll work, you know. _

Squalo nods. The cloth of his shirt shifting buries the neighborhood in noise.

_Yes. _

The floor and the walls nod and close in.

_Yes, yes. _

_Why don't you just do it already, then? What, exactly, are you waiting for?_

_Give me. A second. Wait a damned minute, will you? This is important, Goddamnit. _

He shifts the gun in his grip.

_Hurry. Someone could come. _

_Yeah. Gotta do this. Hurrying now. _

His heart sounds like a war-drum in the quiet, the damned quiet. The clock ticks are crisp bombs bursting. The hum of the refrigerator gets louder and louder until it sounds like a horde of wasps. The world barely raises its uncaring eyes to observe the passing of yet another worthless human shade.

Squalo raises his arm, his muscles tense and trembling and feels the cold circle touch his head like salvation. His finger scratches the trigger.

_**Yes**_

The doorbell rings, a loud, happy tune.

Time re-fast-forwards. Squalo falls off the chair, the gun skittering to the side and landing on the floor with a clang. Somehow, the sun has already set. The cool air grabs his skin and shakes him. A symphony of cricket chirps hits him like a miracle. What happened to the jelly light? Now there's only the cold Cyclops eye of the moon, with its ugly grey splotches, pouring watery illumination through the window, washing out the sin of the world.

"_Squalo. _You in there? Hurry up and open the fuck up!" Fists are pounding the door now.

With a start, Squalo realizes.

Xanxus. Pissed about something or someone. Like always.

Squalo stands up and tries not to notice how his legs shake a little. "I'm coming, I'm _coming_. Shut the fuck up for a moment, will you? Jesus _Christ_."

That's right.

Jesus _Christ, _Squalo.

He breathes in, out, opens the door. Xanxus stomps in without looking at anything, mouth already starting on some tirade about some teacher or other from school. His words flood the air, filling it up with buzzing loudness. Squalo can feel his shirt, damp with sweat, plastered against his chest.

"Fuck. Are you even listening to me?" Xanxus glares at him, waves a fist in his face, sitting on Squalo's perfect couch set, looking about as in-place as a tiger in a Ikea catalogue. Squalo is too distracted to reprimand him, because an astonishing new thought is taking place in his mind—_why bother? _It's not his couch, anyways.

Squalo savors it in his mind. _It's not my couch, anyways. What do I care? _Liberation floods his mouth, making it water.

"What the hell is wrong with you anyways? You look pale as hell. You see a ghost or something?"

Squalo ignores his bullshit. "What's that?" He is looking at Xanxus' coat pocket. _Gun, _he thinks, panicking for no rational reason. _It's a gun, he knows—_

Xanxus pulls it out. It's a dark bottle.

"Stole it from the parents. You want some? It's strong"—

"Give it to me." Squalo pries it from Xanxus' grip and before he can blink half of it is down his throat.

"You son-of-a—_Fuck_! Slow the fuck _down_. What kind of hurry are you in, anyways?" Xanxus takes the bottle back, takes a healthy swig and narrows his eyes at Squalo. "Wipe your mouth, there's stuff on your chin."

Squalo doesn't say anything. The world is spinning already, a horde of new thoughts whirling around him in a joyous mess. Suddenly the possibilities, as they say, are endless.

Xanxus watches his eyes and laughs. "You're some kind of lightweight. Fuck. This is going to be fun. You idiot."

"Shut up." Squalo rubs his eyes.

They drink well into the night. Squalo's parents do not appear, and for the first time in his life Squalo doesn't really care. There's still a twinge, a little pull in his heart—but _that's _not something so easily erased. The rest of it is long gone out the window, evaporated in to the evening air. _I've already wasted thirteen years, _he vows. _Not a second more. From today, my life is mine. Look what I gave up—look what I _almost _gave, and that would have been the last sacrifice._ You know how determined Squalo gets. He drinks the liquor like there is no tomorrow—but there is, there _is_.

At precisely 1:13 in the morning, Squalo is asleep on the couch. There is a loose smile sprawled across his face. Hairs are stuck to his cheek with liquor.

Xanxus looks at him, a little puzzled for a moment. There's something different. But he doesn't bother trying to figure it out. When he raises the bottle to his mouth, nothing comes out. Grunting a little in disappointment—gone already?—he heads out the door. There will be explaining to do, but there it is—parents will be parents. On the familiar way out of Squalo's house, his foot connects with something foreign. His eyes slide downwards and shock back when they hit the floor.

A gun. Huddled in the shadows of the kitchen counter, like a rat in a grain house.

What's a gun doing here? Xanxus bends over and picks it up reverentially. Bathed in the cold moonlight, another picture is formed—The Typical American Teenager, version Not.0. Xanxus looks the gun in the eye, and it feels right against his skin. The metal is not slick with sweat like it was in Squalo's grasp, half-melted, but cool and solid. He shifts it from hand to hand, and the grip clings to his palm and his fingers. A deadly smile jumps across Xanxus' face for a moment, and then it is gone.

_I like this, _he thinks. _With _this, _there could be some fun. _

The door clicks as it shuts.

Almost an year from now, Squalo will repay the accidental favor and throw the punch at Xanxus' unsuspecting teeth, planting the seed of the Lemming Rebellion. Three years from today, Xanxus will fire the one bullet that gun has at a neighbor's door in the dead of night, to save Fran's life. Five years from today, Xanxus will be inducted in to the Mafia, and the gun will be in his pocket.

But today is today.

When Squalo wakes up, he will look everywhere for the gun—but it will be gone. He won't think too hard about it or where it has gone. Why bother? He has the rest of his life to live.

The morning sunlight will be the sweetest he has ever seen, the air like that in the Garden. And the sound of his footstep out of the door will be the sound of chains shattering into pieces, never again to bind.


	3. Three

School—high school—is an unbearable oppression. The fakeness of it all is a poison to the heart and scissors cutting at the soul. Squalo's ears are haunted by the rhythmic ticking of the mass-manufactured clockwork hearts of a nation. The clothes frighten him—generic forms with brand names stitched on like labels, mass-manufactured in some overheated factory in faraway Taiwan. The girls' glossy smiles don't reach their eyes and their hands would be cold, he bets, if you bothered feeling them instead of just touching. The laughs sound eerily hollow, like a parody of joy emerging from the hole-lips of a mask.

Still, there a few who don't fit in.

Locker assignments determine so much of a high-schooler's fate.

Squalo ends up next to a strange blonde boy, too skinny and too small for the jumbled sea of high-school. He looks like he's about ten. He holds himself in a strange way, all skinny angles jutting out in odd directions in a broken-doll kind of way, elegant and yet falling apart. And Squalo's absolutely sure there's bandages around his stomach and his wrists, and he smells the strongly metallic notes of blood around his locker. Sometimes this boy's arms tremble around the books he carries, and sometimes he laughs for no good reason.

His name, as you're unsurprised to know, is Bel. He will come in later.

But for now:

Xanxus ends up all the way across the school next to a dark, tall boy who maintains an awed, awkward silence around Xanxus. Xanxus completely ignores him. Unbeknownst to him, Levi has developed something of a God-like worship of Xanxus.

This is Levi: a typical enough teenager. His defining characteristic would have to be his love of movies. Any type, but action or science fiction would be his favorite. Hours and hours, one time an entire day and a half, sitting crouched up in his small room in the dark, eyes glued to the flickering of the screen. His glassy eyes reflect explosions and guns and the dark suits of the mafia. A large, strange smile distorts his face for those hours. His fingers twitch with a sort of dark, consuming need that blasts his heart to pieces and claws at his ribcage. His heartbeat is the thud of fists against war drums.

But he always ends up turning the light on, and then he realizes he's exhausted, drained to pieces, and there are scratches on his knees from where he clutched too hard. And the television is quiet and dark, and he falls on his bed and sleeps dreamless sleeps.

He sees the fallen hero, the dark antagonist in Xanxus' prowling stride and the black glare of his tiger's eyes. It's almost as good as the escape, the high of films. _This_, thinks Levi, _is so cool_. He has to hide the shaking of his fingers when he clicks open the lock and sees Xanxus there, slamming the door of his locker shut and tossing the books over his shoulder.

Then, there's Lussuria.

Oh, Lussuria.

Is he an idiot, has there ever been a bigger idiot, is the first question. He is, undoubtedly. Think for yourselves: medium-sized suburban school. Gay guy. Despite the number of times Squalo and Xanxus get beat up by frightened upperclassmen who cannot stand the clearness of their eyes, Lussuria attracts even more attention. Exponentially more, you might say.

He could at least try to hide it, thinks Squalo. God, he's obvious about it—that extra two inches of sway in the hips, the fluid roll of the wrists, that poison-honey voice—what does he have, a fucking death wish? What an idiot. But a brave idiot. And Squalo can admire him, a little, in a strange way.

Gotta say, it takes something special to do this.

It is mid-afternoon. The sun is blazing, the day too warm. Squalo can feel his hair, which he's trying to grow out, tickling against his neck. The window is shining an unbearable white with the sun, hot against his touch. Xanxus is standing at his side, arms crossed and black thoughts locked in his eyes. Some several feet behind Xanxus, a solid enough amount of people packed between them, stands Levi, watching in the dark, and the light of the sun flickers from behind the glass screen, painted with Xanxus' silhouette.

The whisper had spread throughout the school like an echo.

_Fight. Fight. _

_There's a fight. _

_It's that guy—that guy—_

_Lussuria. _

Do you need to ask who was being rooted for?

No.

They want to see Lussuria's blood spread across the floor. He doesn't stand a chance. It's the school's strongest, that jock, that generic prick whose name Squalo still doesn't remember, against—what, the guy who calls everyone "honey"? No way, they laugh, in hell.

But now.

Squalo—and the rest of the school— is watching Lussuria pummel the living _shit _out of this guy. Blood is flying everywhere.

Somewhere in the crowd Bel is panting and his fingers are twitching like soulless insects against the window, spasming in white patterns on the glass, squirming. _Blood, _he thinks, _blood. _He can feel himself laughing, giggling madly, as he presses his wrists against the window and feels the ache of his wounds. His veins pound wildly, almost bursting in their wild straining towards the fight.

Squalo's eyes are open wide. Xanxus doesn't seem impressed—Squalo doesn't even know if he's watching—he just stands there, eyes narrowed, judging and quiet. He can fucking _hear _Lussuria's fists grinding this guy's face into pieces from all the way up here, his legs snapping bones and handing bruises out on bloody platters. This is not street fighting, the way he and Xanxus do it. This is mechanical destruction, neat movements of the limbs and the whole body turning in to a smooth machine. Every turn is confident, every kick dealing 100 percent of the damage possible.

This is fucking _amazing. _

The fight is over. Lussuria squints up casually at the onlookers, at the sea of hostile, frightened eyes and waves lazily. His hands catch the light and turn a bright red. _Come fuck with me, motherfuckers, _says his stance. _Come on, you cowards. What you got to fear? It's just a gay boy. Homo-boy, gayer than Christmas, come get a piece. _

The crowd whispers and sways and does not move.

_There's someone else down there. _

_Holy shit._

_It's not over?_

_That other weird kid—what's his name—_

Squalo steps out, hair glinting in the sun, each strand looking like a wire.

Lussuria looks up.

There's something different about this boy's eyes, he thinks. They don't have any hate. Just—

"Fight me," says Squalo.

"Why?"

"Because you're strong. I want to beat you."

Lussuria shifts. Squalo blinks. Bel squirms. Levi watches. Xanxus does not move.

The school authorities burst in, and they—Squalo and Lussuria—are dragged away. The scream of the paramedic's alarms burst the silence. It's over, the teachers yell, shepherding students back to class. Come on, get (the fuck) back in here, hurry up. They leave, feet dragging with varying degrees of resistance. The body of the school's head jock is left, a piece of ground meat, in the pool of his own blood.

In the principal's office, Squalo whispers fiercely to Lussuria, "After school. You and me, we finish this after school."

Lussuria nods mildly. "Sounds good."

Neither of them rats the other out, though it's rather clear Lussuria was involved.

And that's what matters.


	4. Four

**Chapter Four**

While he and Squalo were sitting in that office, flinging promises around like knives, hundreds upon hundreds of pictures, videos, and texts of the fight were also being flung—to disbelieving eyes, and wincing ears. These invisible bricks of challenge were thrown out, and what they wounded was pride. Egos were bruised mightily that fateful afternoon, and the eye of the sun was baleful as it watched the hot steam of teenager rage rise up to obscure the land in angry mists. There is nothing quite as dangerous as someone who feels he has been insulted, for then the fighting takes on the form of defense and attack all at once. Unbeknownst to Lussuria and Squalo, a mindless, destroying storm of words and fists was approaching.

_We'll teach them, _they said, _we'll teach them a lesson. _They rubbed their white knuckles together, ignoring the trembling in their knees, losing it in the roar of a crowd._ No one can get away with that. Those fucking freshmen, that fucking fag, what do they think they know? We'll teach them a lesson._ And they were determined to make that last statement true.

The question for Squalo, when the time came, was:

When did it become _them_?

(-)

Squalo was all for doing it right after the bell rang, but Lussuria said no, it would be better to wait an hour or two. Let the authorities clear out, and then we can have a clean fight, no interruptions. And Squalo grins and finds the logic both admirable and agreeable, because there's no fear of rule-breaking or being caught in it.

The sun is slipping towards the horizon when they show up. _They _is not inclusive only of Squalo and Lussuria. Like real gentlemen, Squalo and Lussuria don't wait for _them_ before starting. This is their own business. Let the little people gather if they want. And they do. Unsurprisingly, Squalo wasn't able to keep it quiet at all. A good portion of the school straggles in gradually, almost guiltily, like they're being caught watching something dirty—and isn't this? Ah, the familiar appeal of the forbidden. It's an venerable, wrinkled tradition by now, right up there with Christmas trees and killing ants.

Xanxus stands in the gathering shade, that cold steel bubble of space around him, coolly noting the details of the thing. Squalo, he thinks, is getting his ass handed to him. It makes him want to laugh. Lussuria is probably going to win this one. Bel, crushed against a side of a building by the people, is practically salivating by now, and his mind is going in crazy circles around that one word, and if people notice him shaking then all they do is back a little away. Levi is watching Xanxus from a discrete distance.

When a hush falls over the crowd.

The dreadful, sudden absence of sound is like a sound in itself.

Squalo and Lussuria turn, Squalo from the ground where his eye is in the process of getting sealed shut, Lussuria from the air above him.

The people part, like the blind sea before a tyrannical, beloved Moses.

Slowly, grandly, the challengers walk in.

There are nine or ten of them. They are buoyed by that mob instinct that has resulted in the trampling of children in crowded spaces. Somehow, their number and normality makes them seem golden and clean, especially compared to the sinful pleasure of Lussuria and Squalo. Xanxus watches as the mood of the crowd shifts, white arms reaching ghostly to the saviors to be cleansed. Now it's really us against them. But the "us" is decidedly more than just those few walking in.

The people closest to the fight widen reverentially out until the circle is bigger.

"You that punk?"

Lussuria rolls his eyes at the line, and stands gracefully, tossing his hair back with perhaps a little more force than normal.

"Mmm. That's me."

Silently, Squalo gets up behind him, swaying from the hurt but still ready, and Lussuria knows he isn't alone in this. The feeling is good, especially when the eyes of the people are narrowing in to hate-filled slits and that steam is rising, rising fast to hide what will happen here. And Xanxus can feel their eyes coming to him, too, because of that bubble—of difference. The mood is rapidly passing the tipping point.

"You fucking fag."

Squalo spits blood.

"That the best you have?" he asks.

The silence.

Lussuria smiles.

"_Honey?_"

And they are running towards them, nine against two.

Two?

From Squalo's eyes, it looks like a mess of blonde hair and white bent limbs, launching like a crooked-pathed rocket in to the opponents, splitting them apart in alarm. Bel is laughing, the sharp notes of his thin voice flying like shrapnel, and the crowd shivers back into itself, nakedly afraid. _What the fuck? _ _Who the fuck is that? _ _Is he insane? _Bel doesn't care, all he knows is that the flesh giving way under his teeth, the tender neck-flesh, is yielding up rich fountains of blood, and in the distance someone is screaming. He digs his sharp nails in harder, feeling them puncture the solid, packed meat and become wet, and drags his opponent down with thin legs and white fingers.

No one really has time to comprehend anything. More of them are coming. Lussuria ducks the punches and throws out his neat, powerful roundhouse kicks. Chaos is erupting; the situation is spiraling out of control as the students scream and reel. He throws one of them into the crowd. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees more people getting dragged in to the melee. A boy with green hair—_green?—_slaps one of the attackers so hard that his body turns all the way around with the force of it. There are horrible, wet sounds coming from a corner somewhere, and the blood pooling on the floor looks fake, and the laughter is still going on.

Slowly, the tide is turning. Lussuria can see Xanxus punching someone straight in the face, all knuckles against teeth, while Squalo

They might have a chance. They might just win this.

But the attackers are thinking the same thing, and one of them decides to take the last step and end this. No one, he thinks, will find out who pulled the trigger. Just another kid killed in craziness.

Levi sees the gun a split second before Xanxus does, and he takes the step that will define the rest of his life. He breaks out from the crowd and shoves himself between the barrel of a gun and Xanxus for the first—not the last, definitely—time. Xanxus' eyes are wide with surprise. Reaching out quick, Levi grabs the boy's hand and twists it sharply to the left. There is a nasty crack and he drops with a scream. Levi's fingers reach for the gun, flinch back, and then grab it.

Xanxus looks steadily at Levi, his face pale, hands frozen against his side. Levi yells over the noise, as if he really needs to, "He was going to shoot you." Xanxus closes his eyes, and laughs somewhat shakily.

"Jesus fucking _Christ_. I know."

Levi uncertainly holds the gun out to him. Xanxus shakes his head. One seems like enough. Two is just tempting something. He reaches out casually and punches straight at Levi's head. Levi flinches. When he opens his eyes again, a boy is falling behind him, clutching his forehead. Xanxus' arm is still extended half an inch from his right ear. He draws it back and walks around Levi to kick the fallen boy in the stomach. Levi smiles nervously.

Somehow, it's over in the time it takes to say those words, in the time it takes to save someone's life. The crowd is scattering with the defeated attackers draped between their shoulders, fleeing as the mist clears. The sun is setting in a brilliantly clear sky.

But there are still unwrapped ends.


	5. Five

**Chapter Five**

Levi _isn't _fast enough to stop Bel when he comes sprinting towards Xanxus, and they realize simultaneously that he's got a knife in both of his hands. Squalo turns with alarm to the shredded flesh of Bel's unfortunate target, and his stomach flips quickly. Lussuria grabs the boy's shoulders from behind just in time, wincing as the sharp bone grinds into his chest.

"Jesus fucking _Christ_." Levi repeats Xanxus' words, trying them out in his mouth.

Lussuria looks at the squirming kid in his arms, wiry strong but somehow much smaller than he expected, and spits into air what everyone is thinking. "What the fuck is wrong with him?"

Squalo comes up to them. There is a moment of recognition, despite the blood. "Hey. _Hey!_"

Xanxus shakes his head impatiently. "You know him?"

"Yeah. He goes to our school."

"_That's _a high-schooler?" Disbelief all around.

"He's fucking ten or something."

"Seriously."

"Gotta be, right?"

Bel takes the moment to break free from Lussuria's grip, white body tearing away from strong fingers. He laughs hollowly as they back away quickly, like the crowd, like everyone he's ever known. How boring. "How boring," he says out loud, spinning, slashing the air to pained shreds.

Xanxus' eyes narrow as they begin circling, shoulders hunched, arms forward to guard, the natural pose of cornered beasts. Only Bel, in the middle of the circle, stands swaying and straight, red crawling up his teeth and his nails, unstable as Hell. He may be just a kid, but then again, there are the knives and the smile. "Come on," he sings, "come on. Don't be boring, like the rest of them." He lunges forward, the knife singing through air half an inch from Levi's face, and spins when Squalo tries to get him from the back, bringing the knife in a smooth arc around. "That's fighting dirty," he croons. "Cheaters, all of you." Stumbling over his feet, Bel almost trips, but straightens at the last minute. His wounds are screaming at him to sleep, but his mind is screaming at him to stay awake. Everything is tearing itself apart.

From the dark, someone emerges. It is the green-haired boy, wiping something off his face. Everyone's busy watching Bel, but now they're watching him, too. Xanxus gives him a look like: _fucking help us out or go away_.

Fran's eyes are empty and he strides straight in, breaking the wall of the invisible circle. Bel giggles and waves his knives in strange patterns, reeling back and forth drunkenly. They face each other in the middle, two skinny kids with a bunch of teenagers circling like wolves.

"Bel."

Squalo can't help thinking, _Oh great, not another kid_. _Is it some kind of fucking alliance? They all seem to know one another. _

"Put those down, please? For me." The boy's voice is strangely cold, out of place even in ths strangeness of this situation.

Bel's face—at least what they can see of it through the hair and the blood—tightens suddenly, and his arms seem to curl to his sides. His fingers hitch to his face, pulling at bangs violently. Fran smiles as he sees the memory haul back and kick Bel in the side of his head, knocking bloody stars into the air around him.

"Froggy. You look like a frog. Frog-boy."

"My name is Fran." The tone says, did you forget? I'm so sorry, Bel. Did you forget again? Forgetting everything. You are so careless.

Put those knives away.

Bel smiles, and it is angry in its confusion.

"No."

Fran moves incredibly fast, dodging a few haphazard swipes of the blades. He goes straight for the bandages Squalo can see through Bel's open coat, and does that weird slapping hit of his—one, two, three efficient, vicious jabs in the stomach. One second Bel is up and the next he's on the ground, curling in on himself like a burnt piece of paper, and there's blood propelling itself brutally out of his mouth. He spasms as Fran steps over him and loosens the knives from Bel's lax grip. Fran makes a shushing sound, kicking Bel hard in the stomach.

There is a dead silence, except for the faint rasping gasp of Bel's breathing. Fran watches his work with the clinical eye of a scientist, flexing the knives, bending them slowly with his fingers. Squalo slowly straightens up. He has to resist the temptation to whistle. This kid is some piece of work—both of them are.

"You can't have patience when you're dealing with him," smiles Fran apologetically. "That's just the way he is. Idiot prince won't listen to anyone."

From the floor, Bel hisses, his fingers slamming against the ground, barely making a mark. Somehow, he's fading from the world already. "Annoying. Little frog." The heavy, monstrous arch of unconsciousness is pressing against his thin back, the telltale spots eating like caterpillars at the sides of his vision. This feeling is so familiar, but he can't remember why. And when he wakes up, there will be the burnt-edged holes, the gaping gaps in his mind, like empty houses and letters cut out of cartoon speech balloons. Always, it's easy to tell something's missing, but you'd be hard-pressed to say what was there. This frustrates him, but he can never focus enough on the phenomenon to say exactly why.

"What do we do?" Levi is looking at Xanxus cautiously.

Somehow, everyone is looking at Xanxus. Tell us. What should we do?

Xanxus' mind is burning. He knows the hospital is out.

"Parents?"

Shaking of the heads. Not an option. It seems they've all got them, unfortunately. Bel makes disgusting gurgling noises, blood spilling from his lips, thrashing around weakly in the last throes of awareness as a wheeling world of black opens under his body. Squalo winces. He'd almost managed to forget about him. He has to wonder how long the kid will last until he bleeds out.

"His house," offers Fran.

"Him." Xanxus makes it clear he'd rather not.

"His parents aren't here."

Xanxus senses a story, and also that this isn't the time.

"Then. We go there."

Bel's eyes roll slowly up, leaving slivers of white glowing between his eyelids behind his bangs.

This is rapidly turning into an otherworldly situation.

Lussuria grabs one of Bel's wrists and flips him over, and Squalo can't help a little intake of breath. Plum-colored, jagged shapes and bright red splotches are growing, strange fungi on Bel's stomach, overwhelming the old white of the bandages. They spread even as he watches, fat lines arching over a soaked page, like a map to some strange land's treasure. It's disgusting and fascinating.

Fran hangs back, eyeing Xanxus, who waves at him to lead the way.


	6. Six

**Chapter Six**

"How many meds does he have in here?"

Squalo is peering at the cabinet, the shelves overflowing with plastic waves of pill capsules. Fran's and Levi's and his too-big feet mix awkwardly on the floor. In the sink, Lussuria mixes a disinfecting solution.

Fucking Hell, this kid is messed up. Prozac, Vicodin, Ritalin, Zoloft, Xanax, Valium. And it's all hidden behind a clean white cabinet door in a tiled bathroom, in a pastel-colored house on fucking Ordinary Lane, Smallville. For God's sake, on the perfectly manicured lawn of Bel's neighbors, there was a statue of their dog. A golden retriever. Squalo's heard the things are loving, obedient, and brainless. They'd last about _this _long without the master. That sounds like about what people around here enjoy. He glances at the group of people standing with him in this room. They are not, he thinks, exactly the golden retrievers of this town. The thought quirks a smile to his mouth.

Lussuria looks up, wiping his forehead with his rubber-gloved wrist. "They're not even stolen. These are prescribed."

"The prescription ran out like three months ago," points out Levi.

Squalo peers at them again. "Fuck."

"I know. He should have taken these already."

Squalo holds a half-full bottle up to the fluorescent light and shakes it. Backlit, the pills look like mixed candy.

Back in the living room, Bel is quiet and pale. The yawning black arch is still hovering close, so he stays still. The overpowering, metallic stench punching his nose is making him sick. The room spins wildly, dim lights blurring into long shining streaks that slice his eyes. He hunches back, letting the fringe of his bangs cut jagged chunks of comforting dark into the air, and hugs his own arms because it's cold.

Xanxus is sitting on the coffee table, staring around the room. It's so _normal, _so Ikea. Nice furniture, matching rugs, good glassware, a now-bloodstained but otherwise quite respectable couch. But why? He can't help feeling something is wrong here.

Where's this kid's parents?

His musings are interrupted by the entrance of Fran. "Idiot prince," he says, squatting to eye-level with Bel. "You had to go rub yourself in the dirt like that. It makes everything so much harder, you know?" When Bel doesn't say anything, Lussuria sighs and rips the bandages open. Bel makes a slight noise, fingers turning white as they clench the couch.

"Uuuuugh," whines Fran. "Smelly."

"He's infected," offers Levi, remembering something similar he saw on some medical drama forever ago.

"Might want to clean your blades next time," murmurs Fran.

Lussuria ignores the comments with all the calm of a doctor—albeit one in a rather impromptu operating theatre. "Squalo dear, hold him, please?"

(-)

"If you're going to do these kinds of things, at least learn to clean up after yourself," complains Lussuria, slapping down Bel's hand for the twentieth time as it reaches up to poke the bandages. The room is filled with an exhausted, sweaty weirdness after the charge of the insane afternoon. Now that the whole thing's over, Bel seems more child than potential serial killer. They can't see the hole in his memory, the newly ripped out page, and the abrupt change of mindset that always comes with it. Fran sees as it as he sees most things, and doesn't say anything. It's good to know, he thinks, that there's always a reset button to be used if it all gets too chaotic, and tosses this piece of knowledge far into the spiraling dungeons of his mind.

"He's such a kid," complains Levi. Bel ignores him, scratching with curled wrist all cat-like and elegant at the bandages on his stomach. Lussuria swats at his hand again, and Bel makes a little noise of protest, but he puts his arm down.

"That's like the tenth time you've said that," says Fran. "What are you, some kind of pervert or something?"

Squalo almost laughs at the way Levi bristles. It's like seeing a Chihuahua attack a Saint Bernard.

"Fine. Fine. I'm not saying anything back because you're just another fucking kid, too."

"I'm actually thirteen."

"You don't look like you're thirteen."

"Ew. The pervert's making pervy comments again."

"Fucking _Hell!_ You fucking _brat_, I'm gonna"—

"Oh, I'm sure you have better things to do. Go lick your boss' ass or something. I'm sure you'd enjoy it."

"_What?" _squawks Levi, but he's blushing. Squalo does laugh, this time. "You know him, right?"

"Gross. I don't hang out with perverts."

"No. The kid?"

"Bel."

"Yeah, crazy boy."

Fran's mouth ghosts a smile. "For a while now."

"So how old is he, for real?" Squalo braces himself to be called a pervert, but it doesn't come.

"He's eleven. Skipped three grades."

Right on time, Bel giggles from the couch, having found Lussuria's cell phone amusing. Lussuria absentmindedly hands him it. Ice skims over Squalo's nerves, making him jump. He's _really_ just a kid. This is all so _wrong. _

"Genius and insanity are just one step apart," says Fran.

Xanxus says coolly, "I'd say in this case they've already crashed."

(-)

The inevitable dinnertime comes on, and the members of the Lemming Rebellion depart reluctantly, pulled back away in to the quiet, bleached streets by the force of routine. And when they step outside, all of them feel the strangeness of normality. As if the world they've been in for the last few hours was—well, the _real _world, and these acid lawns and watchful shutters fake. Where's the evidence of the fight, the loudness of a crowd? It's as if the blood itself has been drunk down by the pavement, slurped down through its pores until nothing but a wary pretense remains. Squalo smiles to think that sitting in the stomach of the streets must be gallons of blood, hidden teenage-blood like theirs. He hopes the blood fills the lungs of this town, hopes it chokes the place to death until it's left vomiting on its white knees. Let this town weep their pain and cough it up in violent spurts of wet hacking.

Why should their struggles be hidden?

(-)

In the end, Bel and Fran are left alone in Bel's normal house. Crickets chirp, the ubiquitous soundtrack of suburbia. The stars twinkle, like the adults tell you they do when you're little. Bel tests how far and how fast he can sit up and not have that deathly arch swing close across his neck.

"Why is the frog boy still in my house?" Bel talks in a breathless whisper, his voice cracking slightly. "He's stinking up the place."

"How should I know? You weirdo prince." _Because we're always the ones left, Bel. _

"Hm." Bel curls up underneath Lussuria's forgotten jacket, enjoying the residual heat. "Don't want you here, froggy."

"Fran," says Fran automatically. "I'm Fran."

Bel smiles nastily. Darkness floods his eyes, the chiaroscuro effect spontaneously born of the harsh white of moon and the primal blackness of night, the same darkness that is barely dented by the flickering yellow sodium attempts of humans to destroy it. It reminds Bel of some humans in the Dark Ages, firing their flimsy black-stick arrows at nothing as the flame belched flesh-ash and ate their houses. It reminds him of the humans as they danced around the fire, and in their squealing ecstasy killed something not inhuman, and let the waves wash the evidence away in a guilty silence. It reminds him of people putting sacks on their heads, crying and waiting for the world to end.

Waiting for the world to end.

"You should go home soon."

"What home?" asks Fran vaguely. Perched on the edge of Bel's couch, he stares into the pale moonlight, wide eyes turning into reflecting white disks. Enormous, fuzzy-edged shadows of bruises cling tightly to his skin. Maybe if Bel pushes him Fran will fall forever and ever and never, ever come back.

"How's your dad?"

Fran's smile is dark and glossy like a lollipop, and the old scars beneath his eye aren't white like normal scars, but dark, the skin grown over the dirt like an ancient shield.

"How's your brother?"

Bel curls away, burying his face in his couch. It smells of a furniture store—chemically clean, smelling, if it is possible, of nothing, a sort of non-odor. It's a draw, again. It's so hard to win against Fran, with his hurting memory-weapons and his hidden dungeons of knowledge. One memory flutters against Bel's forehead, like a strip of faded bandage against the gushing of a wound.

"He's still alive," is all Bel manages to say. _I think. _

"It's the same," says Fran, "for me."

Bel turns quietly over, watching Fran leave. He never fails to leave. Always he goes back, and this is very clear: this is _not_ going _away_. If one didn't know Fran the way Bel does, one would think Fran's footsteps even. One would think his eyes clear, especially in the deceiving white moon when the light reflects off of them in that peculiar way. But Bel sees him, as he sees many things. He sees the clouds in his pupils when there are no clouds in the night sky. He hears the clinking of the key around Fran's neck, latchkey style. It reminds Bel of the signs around prisoners' necks when they take their mug shots. Isn't sneaking back into your house futile, when the moment you left it was already too late? Yet somehow, Bel never feels sorry for that frog.

If he's going to be that annoying, thinks Bel, he deserves what's coming to him. The thought sends him to sleep with a smile, and the primal darkness bears him away on its battle-scarred arms like a mother.

**Author's Note: **Whoo. I actually like this chapter! :D Mammon _will _show up soon. I swear! And cookies for anyone who recognizes a certain… reference… (it was pretty obvious!).


	7. Seven

**Chapter Seven**

Sometime in the next few weeks, the members of the Lemming Rebellion all gravitate in a rather spectacularly colored mass of fading wounds. They sit at one decrepit lunch table, even though it's too small for all their growing teenage bodies. The problem is greatly compounded by the fact that Xanxus likes sitting on the table, limited space aside. It's a testament to the cloud of practically tangible danger that hovers around him—that smell of a gas-filled mine just before it explodes—that no one tells him to get off.

It's a typical enough day. Whatever that means. Xanxus is staring away into nothingness, his mind an impenetrable mess. Lately he's been even more silent than usual. Fran is poking fun at Levi with his empty eyes and sharp tongue. Levi is attempting to defend himself and failing rather hilariously. Lussuria is rattling away about nothing in particular while skillfully rewrapping the bandages around Bel's wrist. Bel holds one arm out absentmindedly, absorbed in playing some stupid game on Lussuria's cellphone with the other hand. No one is listening to anyone else. Squalo watches the cream roads travel over and over and over again on Bel's paper skin in a hypnotizing swirl.

"Where'd you learn how to do that, anyways?"

"And then he was like—what?" Lussuria's words cut off mid-flow.

"That." Squalo nods his chin at Bel, who seems to have no idea they're talking about him.

Lussuria smiles. "Maybe I'm just accident prone." He wiggles his eyebrows, making a cute "ouch" expression.

"So is the little brat," counters Squalo. "That doesn't fucking mean anything."

"Hm. Good point. I should probably teach him first aid. Not that I think this child would—"

"Stop avoiding the question!"

Lussuria makes a little shoulder shrug of assent. "So direct, Squalo dear. That's what I love about you."

"You're still. Doing it. _Annoying._"

Lussuria winces at the rising growl at the end of the sentence. "Okay, okay. _Impatience, _darling, _really_. You need to grow out of that. My dad's military, is that good enough for you? Taught me first-aid. I've had plenty of practice on myself, obviously." He continues with the air of a sage, "You see, skin is the most important thing, dear, except perhaps for hair. One's pores can never be clean enough. The first thing to go when you age—"

Squalo frowns. "Who cares about skin?" His filter-less mouth comes unhinged, dumping the words heavily and gracelessly in to the air. "But if he's military"—

"He has a problem with me being gay?" Lussuria laughs. The edges of the sound are rounded almost gently, worn smooth by the harsh rubbing of sandpaper and knife-grinding stone. "Answer that yourself, dear." He finishes the bandaging, jerking the cloth closed with a severe movement. Bel makes a protesting noise but doesn't look up.

Squalo sighs. He has enough shit to deal with as it is. Someone else's is a little much.

(-)

Bel collides with him at the lockers. Literally. In a crash of white limbs and long hair, they're down in a heap, earning numerous guffaws and a few taunts from the audience and participators of his daily reality television. It's been about a month since the afternoon showdown. People still give Squalo his space, but in crowds people always feel freer to laugh, in that way typical of humans and their notions of safety.

"Fucking _watch _where you're going. Brat. I'm going to kill you some day, I really will."

"He's being angry again," sings Bel to no one, disentangling himself in a smooth movement while Squalo's still struggling with which way is up. "Doesn't appreciate it when I come to play with him. Ungrateful Captain."

_When did I become the fucking Captain of this mess? I never wanted any of this. _

Approximately two hours later Squalo storms into the cafeteria. It's amazing how the walk of a single guy can make a small building full of people turn around. Even Xanxus turns to look for once, because everyone can tell the proverbial shit is about to hit the fan, and this time _he's_ not the one smelling of gas about to explode.

Bel sits, drinking chocolate milk rather calmly. He has somehow managed to find a spare table, which are rarer than gold in this school, and cover the entire thing with cartons of milk—attached seats, molded plastic top and all blanketed in haphazard pyramids. Two hundred, they murmur, he somehow managed to buy two hundred—twenty-five cents apiece, but that's small change compared with the bribe he paid the authorities. Blind eyes don't come cheap. And the best part?

The money wasn't his.

Yes.

That's right, what you're thinking.

"A prince," says Bel airily, "never pays for anything."

In one hand, he twirls Squalo's wallet. In the other, he holds Fran's. That's right, Bel, thinks Squalo vaguely, is ambidex-something or other. But right now, that's not really what he cares about. "Naughty kid," says Lussuria approvingly, ever the mother who cares for all the wrong things.

The cafeteria is laid out like this: one long, clear aisle down the middle, surrounded by tables all around. It's rather like a catwalk or the walkway in weddings. In any case, the situation is the same: three contenders and a school full of attendees. It is really, _really _tempting to sprint down that aisle and tackle Bel to the floor and punch the living _shit _out of him. Squalo feels his sneakers itch forwards, almost of their own accord, like tensed wolves.

"Squalo."

Fran is standing behind him somehow, and where Squalo's fury is the blazing afternoon sun, Fran's is the blast of ice from a distant land, all cold sharp shards of frost. His words concentrate the sun's rays into hot, bright spots.

"You'd see we should do this later if you thought about it more—but, ah, yes." Fran's voice is unbearably, annoyingly flat. "I forgot who I was talking to. You _always _think _everything _out."

"What the fuck, you brat, have you gone insane?" Yes, there'll always be two brats when it comes to this crew. "We finish it fucking now." He gestures wildly at Bel's arrogantly curved smile. As if it's possible _not _to want to kill Bel, the way he is now.

Bel takes a sip of milk and giggles. Fran shakes his head, his wide-moon eyes unblinking, reflecting everything and revealing nothing. Calmly, he threatens Squalo. "If you start fighting, I'll call the teachers over." They're all sitting in the lounge right now while chaos erupts on the other side of the school, sipping their coffee and making polite conversation to the heady background beat of angst and cruelty. Keeping the mob animals separated from the rulers is standard procedure in any country. "I'll call them over," he continues, "and they won't have any choice, you know, but to shut this whole thing down. And then we'll all be in trouble, and they'll have to watch us, if they don't want rumors of gangs and things spreading around."

"I'm not going to wait on your fucking word"—

"We do this later," Xanxus commands shortly, having made up his oh-so-authoritative mind on the issue.

"What?" Squalo whirls on Xanxus. _Damm it, him too?_

"Didn't hear me the first time, dumbass? I said _later._" hisses Xanxus.

"Listen, asshole." God, why does Xanxus have to such a controlling, arrogant prick all the time? "Who the fuck do you think you are? You are not a fucking army general or something, and I am not under your fucking command." There is no, _no _fucking _second-in-command _in this crew because there is _no_ fucking first-in-command_. _

"You have a problem or something?" Xanxus narrows his eyes.

"Fuck _yes_, I have a problem with you." _Ever since you found out you were fucking adopted, you're acting like you're the king of us or something. Your inflated ego probably takes half our table-space every day. Just because Levi would pay ten bucks to lick your ass doesn't mean the rest of us give a shit._ "You and that stupid-ass prince sitting pretty over there." Bel smiles and waves at the mention of his name, wrist bending smoothly around an invisible champagne glass like they teach you in charm school. The crowd sways and mutters. Is this gonna be a four-way fight, Fran vs. Bel vs. Squalo vs. Xanxus? This is gonna be something for the centuries.

There's only five minutes left of lunch, as demonstrated by Fran's eyes flicking quick to the clock.

"Then tonight," dictates Xanxus clearly, "tonight we meet back in the courtyard, at midnight. And we sort this out. You have a fucking _problem _with me, a problem with him, that's fucking _fine_. We fight it out there."

The way he says it, he doesn't give anyone a choice.

Trust me, he's only going to get better at it.

(-)

It's midnight, back at the school. We don't care about the fight, even though the rest of the crowd's watching in tensed silence, afraid the sleeping adults will hear, when actually they'd force themselves to keep sleeping even if the fire was licking their feet—which it just might be.

Given some time, even a candle flame can burn the world.

Instead, follow me to the edge of the humanity, where there is a conversation taking place.

Fran nods his head in time to the punches, tapping his foot in his fluid way. He blinks as the other boy appears next to him. It's a little creepy and more than a little annoying, the way he always takes him by surprise. Then again, by now Fran is tired, and for Mammon it's the middle of the day.

"Fran."

"Mammon." Fran tries to load as much dislike as he can in to one sentence without letting fear creep in. Mammon ignores it, damn him and his dead-snake-eyes, his live-snake-fingers, his poison.

"I have it."

Fran's hands almost don't shake as he says, "Funny. You're acting as if I have the money."

"It's really unlike you, Fran, to be so unprepared." Mammon's voice is even colder than Fran's, if that's possible, and infinitely older as his frostbite eyes sweep slowly over the rainbow of Fran's pain, chilling the wounds, pressing hard in to them. Fran winces as if he's actually doing it. "That's just too bad."

"It's also funny the way you act as if it's my fault."

Mammon doesn't turn. Is that a corner of desperation he hears? He loves human desperation. "It's not your fault. It's never your fault. That's what they all say, Fran."

"A certain idiot member of royalty took my money." The words are spat, the tone says, _happy now?_

Mammon sways back, halting, amused, his lips curling in a dark-honey, sweet-poison smile, revealing neat sharp triangles of teeth in a half-way snarl. He can imagine the blonde prince doing that, smiling that half-moon smile of his.

"Really? How'd that happen?"

They stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the dark, darker than shadow, staring straight forward. Mammon stills his feet, letting Fran's words wrap themselves around his imagination. And though Mammon doesn't say anything, he mentally calculates what it will take to make his nightly routes more efficient—the widened strides, the perfect linking of subway-routes like playing dominoes—so as to create a little spare time.

He thinks he may finally have found a place to spend it.


	8. Eight

**Chapter Eight**

How the fuck do Fran and Bel and Mammon all know each other? You think, is this some kind of fucking conspiracy?

It just might be.

What do you think fate is, anyways?

(-)

For Mammon it was just another day. As normal as his days—nights, to be accurate, he reprimands himself—can be. Which is about as normal as melting clocks and backwards bullets and drifting concrete bubbles.

Ever since the illness came upon her, nothing has been the fucking same.

He walks to the front desk girl's weary smile, and it's not so much his movements as his soul that is stiff. After all, the steps are still lithe, still liquid darkness—but Mammon feels the skin itself is punctured beyond repair. He can feel himself deflating like a tire or a water balloon, tossed on the grass to die slowly. If a water balloon, a mere toy, knows what time is, can know sophisticated seconds and minutes.

Somehow he does not doubt it.

He slides past the girl's curious eyes—the cat got killed, you know?—and moves down the hall. He can see his footsteps sunk six-feet-deep in the tile, the imprints of his heavy mind, from last time and the time before that and the time before _that. _It all blurs together like stained ink on paper: the hours, the days, his life.

He is looking down on his mother now, tangled in her wires, the white sheets smothering her torso. He listens to the moribund beeping of the machine tracing her heart. He forces himself to stare dispassionately at her throat, at her wrists—all bones wrapped in yellow, flaking parchment.

She becomes aware of his presence.

"Peter? Peter, is that you?" Her voice rasps like a file at his ear.

And slowly, tonelessly, he answers.

"Yes."

He says, "It's me."

What does it matter? It's not like he knows anything anymore. Why should identity be set aside?

She asks for her lawyer, her lovers, even his own fucking father—but never him.

(-)

Some time ago, maybe when he quit school, maybe when he found selling drugs to strung-out kids in the shadows of the big city was the easiest way to make money, maybe when he realized his mother was living on the destruction of a thousand children, he knew.

That money had somehow gotten in the way of love.

Was bigger than love could or would ever be.

Staring at his mother's corpse, his eyes were choked with money and his heart pulsed cash. The I.V. in her wrist is throbbing liquid currency, _his _liquid sweat and blood. How can he love her, lying in this hospital, costing him so much? Three and a half thousand a month, and she dares not to get better? She should be fucking prancing around, fucking dancing in a meadow, never mind that there's only pathetic patches of weeds in this city.

She should be thanking him for her dismal scraps of existence, and even those bits and pieces are an insult to the title.

There's a reason, he thinks, they call making money _making a living. _

(-)

And so Fran was originally just another strung-out kid, just another cash-cow, just another job, but then life got in the way, the funny way it always does. This is a really nice neighborhood. It's always the nice ones, thinks Mammon, where everything gets reallyfucked up.

He is standing in Fran's living room in the middle of the night, and Fran is begging him, dry-mouthed, pained as the moon grins. Fran flinches every time Mammon gets within ten feet of him, every time Mammon makes any sort of sudden movement. The room stinks of blood and things, and Mammon is pretty sure in another five minutes this kid won't be conscious to say anything to him.

"Just give me"—

"No," says Mammon, cutting him down. "You pay first, I hand it over, and that's all."

"The money is up- upstairs and I can't"—

_Can't breathe can't think it hurts so fucking bad just give me it and then I swear I'll go get whatever it is you want swear to God_

"No_,_" says Mammon. The face this kid is making almost makes him feel sorry.

"_Why _are you doing this to me? What a bastard," mumbles Fran, half-crumbling against the wall as everything sways and the world pulses around him. The need to pass out is so strong he can feel it scratching at the insides of his kneecaps, clawing his tongue and the walls of his throat until he wants to vomit. "I'll get it after, I fucking swear to God," he says, his voice cracking.

Okay, hysterics. No. Mammon does not deal with hysterics.

"Listen, whatever your name is. Every kid's money is upstairs, and every kid can't can't _can't_ do anything, really swear-to-God he can't. You think that means anything? You can't give me the money, you get nothing. It's reallyvery simple." Mammon can't deny he's getting a little pleasure from this. Let him struggle. He thinks he's the only one with problems, him in his little suburban house? Mammon has seen too much to let any of it sink. He can name twenty locations in this room alone where Fran could be—will be, for sure—hiding a gun, a gun he'd point at Mammon the moment the drugs hit his system.

Though admittedly the wounds are pretty bad and Mammon doesn't think Fran can move anywhere fast enough to be a threat.

"_Fine," _whispers Fran, swaying.

When the kid emerges several minutes later, he really looks like he's at the end of his tether. All that sweating and shaking and bleeding. How old, Mammon wants to ask, are you anyways? But that doesn't matter to a professional. What matters is that this kid is in so much pain he doesn't care he's being way over-fucking-charged. This is the type of child that gets Mammon's mother's urine samples analyzed, because of course that costs extra. Everything in that fucking hellhole does.

Meanwhile, Fran takes too many pills too fast, swallowing them dry and collapsing against the couch, his eyes one mess of clouded lake and fuzzy moon. His pupils are the size of marbles.

(-)

Something. Something about the atmosphere, the house, the weirdness of the location. Something about Fran's eyes before he swallowed. But Mammon does something unprecedented.

He sits down.

No, wait, first he pours himself a glass of water—no soda, no wine—out of Fran's refrigerator. Then he sits next to Fran on the couch. He looks Fran in the eye, like Fran is actually able to hear him above the scream of the drugs through his system, and sips calmly. For some reason he is sweating slightly, though the night is cool.

"Why am I doing this to you?"

He tells him everything. His voice spills into the dark: calm, but unrelenting, like a wave of ants slaughtering a grasshopper. After all, who's going to hear? Not Fran, that's for certain, not the way his veins are bulging and his eyes closing. He won't remember a word come morning, or afternoon, or whenever he wakes up, and that's just how Mammon likes it.

But Bel is another matter.

Mammon is a smart, cold-blooded bastard, and even Mammon didn't see Bel crouching at the door.

Mammon hears something he doesn't like—his ears have become good at that—and the gun is out of his pocket before he can even react to his own movements, and Bel is pointing his knives back as if they can block bullets. Mammon's mind-voice is getting loud now, thundering in his own ears, that this blonde kid knows his secrets and that is absolutely unacceptable. Knowing is vulnerability is death. He aims dead-center at Bel's forehead. Fran is limp on the couch, touching his arm, half-swooning in to darkness.

"Put the knives down. You think they're going to do anything?"

Bel does not put the knives down. He smiles, arms covered with proud, weeping scars. Mammon's finger scratches the trigger.

And then.

"Bel?"

"Bel? What's going on?"

Sleepy-five-year-old-voices are looking up to their wide-awake-substitute-older-brother-slash-friend-of-their-real-older-brother. Mammon can see Fran's eyes as they probably used to look in these eyes, can see Fran's wide cheekbones and his pointed chin without the damage. It's funny how the hope of children is such a universal thing. It makes all their faces look the same in some way.

There is one girl and one boy. Fraternal twins.

Slowly, slowly, Bel puts his knives down. Slowly, slowly, Mammon puts the gun down.

(-)

Mammon ends up staying the night.

Did he forget to mention? He's got nowhere to stay. As if he has money to rent an apartment, with the cost of his mother's useless life. Usually he just squats in some abandoned building—there's always abandoned buildings in big cities—or a park. He's slept under bridges, in car tunnels, restrooms. And the rain is falling in steady streams outside and the room is warm and the smell—well, laughs Mammon bitterly, he's had worse, hasn't he?

He hasn't slept in a real, inhabited house in a long time.

Mammon knows Bel will not hurt him now, because the children have seen him, and if Mammon disappears Bel will have to explain how. And that would be messy for everyone.

"Nothing's going on. A peasant's come for the prince. Go back to sleep, little brats, or there's really gonna be trouble."

He falls asleep to the sound of Fran's wet breathing, to the sound of Fran's pain.

(-)

He wakes up around seven. Mammon never could sleep more than a few hours at a time. The light gestures urgently at him. He tries to place what's wrong.

Fran is still out cold.

The air still stinks of blood.

Bel is still standing over him with a knife.

Mammon is up so fast his shadow lags behind, one arm around Bel's throat, one hand pressing his wrist against the wall.

"Ushishishi. Fast," laughs the prince, his scars rubbing sticky, warm liquid on the inside of Mammon's sleeve. "You're tricky."

"What are you doing?" asks Mammon, pressing Bel harder against the wall, not thinking about what would have happened if he'd gotten up half a minute later. Mammon does not deal in could-haves, should-haves, might-haves.

"The prince was just leaving," says Bel. "Something bad's coming."

Mammon's eyes slide sideways to Fran's damaged body.

"Yes," says Bel.

Mammon wants to ask what about the kids, who's gonna protect them now that their big brother's passed out, but he knows angels don't exist.

The pavement outside is an endless, wet circle, lit by the limp white sun in a bowl of grey ashes. Mammon doesn't look back because he never looks back, but he's already got the address memorized.

Their eyes haunt him.


End file.
